(LIMITLESS) CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE: A SERIES OF FAILURES

Armsmaster carried Taylor Hebert’s limp body across the ruined street, her weight awkward against his armor but lighter than he’d expected. Far too light. Every step echoed against the cracked asphalt, but the sound was lost in the ringing silence that lingered in the wake of her destruction of Bakuda’s ABB faction.

What remained of Bakuda wasn’t much either. A smear of blood and carbon etched along an impact crater, her form gone beyond recognition. Armsmaster only knew it was her because, logically, it couldn’t have been anyone else.

He told himself it was a victory. One of the city’s greatest threats, neutralized, and by a hero no less. There would be no more sudden bombings, no fear gripping schools, bus stations, or other public spaces. No more civilians torn apart at random.

But it didn’t feel like a victory. If anything, it felt like another failure.

His gauntlets tightened involuntarily around Hebert’s arm. He’d failed her again, and he had known it the moment Dragon’s voice reached him while he was working overnight in his lab, pitched high with alarm: “Taylor Hebert went alone to fight Bakuda.”

And now, here she was, blood still drying on her cheeks, and her body covered in soot and injuries that were almost fully healed. She was alive, but only because of her power. Alive despite everything she had chosen to throw herself into.

He thought back to Sophia Hess, to the moment he had finally reported her misconduct, ensuring her removal from the Wards and subsequent sentencing to juvenile detention. It had been the right call, one of the only times in recent memory he’d felt like he had truly upheld the ideals he’d learned during his early days in the Protectorate. Yet even then, the victory had been hollow, coming too late to undo a year and a half of damage.

This felt worse.

Because this time, it wasn’t just about one girl’s suffering. It was about every civilian in the vicinity who had died—either directly or indirectly—while Taylor forced her way through Bakuda’s gauntlet. Every unwilling suicide bomber detonated because she had been left alone to carry the burden of justice on her own shoulders. Armsmaster had seen the scorch marks, the dried blood on what little walls remained, the fragments of human remains scattered like grotesque shrapnel. Dozens of innocent lives, maybe even more.

And all of it traced back to his failure.

He should have seen it. No, he did see it, but only in hindsight. Taylor Hebert’s father had died just days ago, and Keith, her mentor, not long before that. She had been stretched thinner than any person—cape or not—had a right to be, caught between grief, anger, and powers that seemed to promise invulnerability, until Bakuda proved otherwise.

Her forcefield had failed her, for the first time since she’d joined their ranks. That realization alone was enough to plant fatalism in her, enough to push her from reckless arrogance into self-destruction born out of helplessness.

So of course she went after Bakuda. 

He should have anticipated it, should have intervened, should have made certain she was monitored after the funeral, and not left to wander her grief with no tether but vengeance.

And he hadn’t.

Because he was Armsmaster. Because he had a record to maintain, systems to refine, patrols to manage, and a dozen other excuses that forewent the individual parts in favor of the whole itself. Because he wasn’t good with people, and because he couldn’t always read what was right in front of him.

But even he had known. Deep down, he had known. And he had ignored it.

Now the bill had come due, and he was honestly tired of it. Tired of the failures stacking one after another, each more costly than the last. Tired of being the man who always acted too late, or who only recognized the truth in retrospect.

Piggot’s voice broke through the static of his comm. “Colin. Report.”

He adjusted his grip on Taylor’s body, eyes fixed on the distance, on the morning sun slowly rising past the horizon.

“Bakuda is dead,” he said, his voice flat. “And Taylor Hebert is alive. But…” He paused, words heavy. “We failed.”

There was no answer from the director, no clipped order, and no reassurances either. Only silence born of the ugly truth.

Armsmaster carried Taylor towards his bike, his boots crunching over debris, the weight of his failures far heavier than the girl in his arms.

He could prepare for the grand battles, plan against Endbringers and other larger-than-life threats, but it was always the smaller, innocuous ones that always tripped him up. 

It seemed he had been defined by his tunnel vision long enough.